


Immediate Circle

by paperwar



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-28
Updated: 2011-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperwar/pseuds/paperwar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was funny -- or maybe it wasn't -- how Taki saw circles everywhere, even still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immediate Circle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Written for a prompt from [](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**fic_promptly**](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/).

It was funny -- or maybe it wasn't -- how Taki saw circles everywhere, even still. The base of a glass, the matched set in a traffic light. She would grade them in her mind. An orange was flawed. The same with a tomato. Their beauty came in part from their imperfectness, but she didn't care. She'd check for perfect circles her entire life. It was just part of the way she absorbed the world now.

She still drew them, too. Not with a waist-high stick in a lonely field, of course. But her school notebooks were filled with them. Big ones, little ones: all well-shaped and elegant. Most of her practice was through dragging that stick through the dirt, but the motion that her arms knew translated itself to her fingers; if her brain wanted circles, her body could deliver. Sometimes, waiting to cross the street, she found her fingers tracing the shape inside her coat pocket, or her foot moving idly to start an arc.

The circles weren't what freed her from the curse in the end, but they had power. And they did attract the attention of Natsume (and his adorable cat), which made the difference. She might need that skill again, might find another use for her grandfather's pattern.

It was wise to be prepared.

The circles had brought her the best, and worst, things in her life so far: the wonder and terror of the ayakashi, the grim fire in her chest from knowing she had a year to save herself.

She never spoke about this continued focus on the shape, but she thought Natsume noticed -- he noticed a lot of things, she was realizing, without saying much about them.

If Natsume knew, that probably meant his kitty-cat (she had to suppress a tiny squeal just thinking about him) did too, and Tanuma. But it was all right. She wasn't the only strange one among them.

Maybe that was the best thing of all: her own circle, people like Natsume and Tanuma. They knew the same world she did, the one just a half-step away from what most people saw. She thought that might make it worth it.


End file.
